Manifold: Space
Chapter One
Gaijin
A passenger in the Hope-3 tug, Reid Malenfant descended toward the
Moon.
The Farside base, called Edo, was a cluster of concrete
components-habitation modules, power plants, stores, manufacturing
facilities-half buried in the cratered plain. Comms masts sprouted
like angular flowers. The tug pad was just a splash of scorched
moondust concrete, a couple of kilometers farther out. Around the
station itself, the regolith was scarred by tractor traffic.
Robots were everywhere, rolling, digging, lifting; Edo was growing
like a colony of bacilli in nutrient.
A hi-no-maru, a Japanese Sun flag, was fixed to a pole at the center
of Edo.
"You are welcome to my home," Nemoto said.
She met him in the pad's air lock: a large, roomy chamber blown into
the regolith. Her face was broad, pale, her eyes black; her hair was
elaborately shaved, showing the shape of her skull. She smiled,
apparently habitually. She could have been no more than half
Malenfant's age, perhaps thirty.
Nemoto helped Malenfant don the suit he'd been fitted with during
the flight from Earth. The suit ... read full excerpt from: Manifold: Space ebook
